29 march 2005

Tuesday morning we were back at Talley’s apartment recovering from our time in Seville. Seville where the celebration of Semana Santa was so surreal (the most overused word ever, but what else can I say?) that I can’t write about it yet. There were 2 a.m. processions of hundreds of men in cloaks and pointy hats stooped under massive black wooden crosses and are you getting the idea here? This will take me months to untangle.

In any case there we were at Talley’s in Cartagena. Eleven in the morning she gets a call from Jean Francois. He is calling to find out where we are, since we had planned to take the one hour bus ride to Murcia to join him for the spring festival.

“It’s only eleven in the morning,” I point out, rewrapping the blanket around me.

“He says they’re already drinking,” replies Talley. “He says they have a cart. I don’t really know what he means. Maybe they have a car?”

We puzzle over why anyone would want to have a car during a festival, but push these thoughts aside and pack our bags. I will go directly from Murcia to the airport the next morning.

In Murcia we swing by the apartment that Jean Francois shares with Jean Michelle. We drop off our things. Jean Michelle, home for siesta, rallies to join us. He leads us into the streets, which are filled with large groups of drinking, laughing people in historical dress. Mind you, not dress from a particular period of history. Dress from any period of history. There are older women in peasant dresses and young hip men in rope sandals and lots of funny hats.

Americans don’t like to dress funny. They feel self conscious, and they tend to only dress up in ways that are flattering. As Rachel pointed out one Halloween in NYC, most people’s Halloween costumes are a flimsy excuse to dress provocatively. No one ever just dresses like a cat for Halloween – they dress like a sexy kitten. Or a sexy maid. Or a sexy whatever.

But the Murcians in the street were dressed in all kinds of ways, and many of them were not especially flattering. They certainly weren’t hip and stylish. This was surprising in a country that seems, in many ways, particularly obsessed with appearances.

We wove through the streetparties and emerged in one of Murcia’s public squares. At this point the earlier telephone conversation took on a sudden new meaning. The park was packed with groups of friends and families, celebrating together like a Fourth of July picnic. But instead of each group congregating around a barbeque, each group congregated around a shopping cart. A stolen shopping cart loaded with ice and alcohol.

We found Jean Francois’s cart, surrounded by Brazilians. Most of them had just met in the past few days, yet they were celebrating together like family. Does anyone want to go to Brazil with me?

For the rest of the afternoon and evening, our routine, like that of the other revelers, went like this: Push the shopping cart to a desirable spot. Park it. Hand out a round of beers, supplement with shots of vodka and absinthe, chat with neighboring cart groups, flirt with neighboring cart groups, harass the slow drinkers, pack up the cart, repeat.

I didn’t sleep until I was on the bus to the airport. And that was my last day in Spain.

24 march 2005

We spent 23 hours in Cordoba and we were awake for 19 of them, walking around the winding streets between the white and yellow buildings and eating tapas in the renowned Cordoba courtyards. Now it is morning – well, noon – and we are recovering from a night of cervecas and dancing and a man named Rafael by sipping fresh-squeezed orange juice at a patio table on the Calle de la Porteria de San Pedro Alcantara. We are sitting under orange trees groomed into lollipop shapes, and being serenaded by a roving guitarist in a black cowboy hat.

There are harder things, than our life here in Spain.

23 march 2005

I’m not sure where God is but I don’t think he’s here anyway, in this particular mosque in Cordoba on this particular day. I feel this because instead of my lungs and other insides filling with God as they usually do in startling places of worship, I’m clinical and in my head, thinking about language and travel and online personals. It must be all the tourists, with their cameras and guidebooks and inappropriately loud, casual conversation. It hasn’t left any room for spirit. With all the flash photography and fanny packs, this place feels as sacred as Disney World. I wonder what they’re all here for. The architecture? I wonder if God returns when they leave.

This place was once a cathedral, and then was a mosque, and now is a cathedral again. I bet God stuck around through all of that. But the tourists – that was the last straw.

There are cases in the walls with religious artifacts. On some of the processional crosses Jesus is very, very small. Small enough to fit entirely on the vertical piece of the cross, his arms just barely reaching out to the sides. He looks tiny and sad, dwarfed by all that gold. He is smooth and whole and shiny, while everything around him is gilded and sharp.

21 march 2005

Cemeteries and lemon trees are rolling by the bus window and the two dreadlocked American girls in front of me are talking about how bad rape is and how bad Spanish driving is. I am going to Granada, to the Alhambra, a place I have only seen in slideshows.

I am reading The Sun Also Rises whenever the landscape is monotonous and the dreadlocked girls are quiet, so I’m not reading much. Talley is sleeping in the seat next to me, sleeping right through the bus radio, which is playing a perfect recreation of a 1989 soft rock station. Love ballads mostly.

Last night we had dinner with Talley’s neighbors and their friends: a French guy and two couples from French-speaking islands. There was no language we all had in common. (Six years of high school French and I can’t even get through a dinner party.) Sometimes the conversation would split into two languages discussing the same topic. Sometimes an English speaker and a French speaker would try to understand each other in Spanish. I love this.

(We are driving by vineyards. The girls are talking about mama’s boys. Elton John is singing.)

The French couple hosting served salted duck with Moroccan bread and sangria. We passed the dishes around three times. Afterwards we drank honey liqueur. Aperitifs are highly underutilized in the states.

Full and tipsy and giddy with misunderstandings, we gathered around the Miss Espagne competition on television. It was at once more modest and more risqué than Miss America. The contestants were less plastic than Miss America, with a wider range of heights and hairstyles and – to a small degree – body types. In the swimsuit competition all the women wore the same bikini, which was primly full-coverage in the front but essentially absent in the rear. When fully dressed, the women wore abundant large plastic jewelry in beach colors. They towered on impossibly high heels at all times.

And now we are going to Granada.
(Fields of greenhouses, fruit pickers. Bonnie Taylor, Phil Collins.)

hola, chorros, fuego, cansada

20 march 2005

I am so, so tired.

And I am in Spain.

It is Sunday, specifically Palm Sunday. On Thursday I flew from Amsterdam to Valencia. It was the sort of flying experience that feels like an extreme sport when it is happening, with all of the superfluous security measures and re-check-ins that budget European air travel entails, but I’m sure you’ve all had similar ordeals so I’ll spare you the details. Let’s just say that I woke up in Amsterdam at six am, after three hours of sleep, and I arrived in Valencia – the same time zone – at four pm. You may note from a passing glance at a map that the only thing between the Netherlands and Spain should be France and Belgium. And Belgium is pretty small.

In any case I arrived, exhausted and plane gritty, hungry and disoriented, to Valencia’s small airport. In the dilapidated schoolbus carrying me to the town center, the Boxer was playing. We passed crumbling buildings, covered in tiled mosaics and graffiti, Paloma te quiero, and I sang lai la lai lai, lai la lai, la la lai lai, lai, and I felt I had arrived.

I came to Valencia for Las Fallas, a weeklong fiesta of parades, dancing, fireworks, and most notably the burning of eight hundred building-sized effigies. What began years ago as the periodic scrapping of excess wood by the town carpenters has developed into an annual festival with thousands of participants. Throughout the city, citizens divide into neighborhood groups to create the monumental fallas, designed and built during the entire year, only to be displayed for this single week and then burned to the ground. Standing as tall as eighty feet, the fallas are constructed from wooden scaffolding, covered with papier mache, and elaborately painted. Most of the fallas depict political figures, popular entertainers, neighborhood personalities, and naked ladies, but the more ambitious fallas involve dozens of smaller sculptures interacting in complex and humorous scenes. Costing as much as two hundred thousand euros each to realize and requiring the cooperation of every citizen, the fallas are the hub of Valencia’s identity and calendar.

Neighbors not involved with the sculptural side of the event instead spend seven days filling the streets with bands and costume parades.


Once I arrived in the city, I headed to the Plaza del Ayuntamiento to meet Talley, who is studying a few hours away in Cartagena. She had arranged for us to stay with Sylvie, the sister of a friend, who planned to meet us in the plaza an hour later. We sipped coffee at an outdoor café. Sylvie arrived after three hours and two phone calls, thus beginning three days of the maximum cultural misunderstanding possible.

Talley and I were both exhausted from our day of traveling and carrying our bags and bedding, but Sylvie decided to take in some of the parades before heading home. By the second hour of touring we were practically crumpling into the sides of buildings at every corner. Sylvie did not seem to notice.

Eventually we arrived at her place, a spacious fourth floor apartment just outside the city center that she shares with two young Spaniards. Although tired, we were determined to stay awake for the midnight fireworks display. We ate an informal dinner and chatted around the table in Spanish. Around 11:30 Sylvie went to go get ready. She emerged at 11:55, frantic that we had not left yet – though we had all been waiting for her – and proceeded to run out of the building and down the block in her black pointy-toed heels. She ran for ten minutes, stopping only sporadically to look back in disgust at our meager attempts to keep up.

We reached a park. We watched the fireworks display. It was beautiful, and lasted just long enough for us to catch our breath.

We were joined by Sylvie’s roommate Israel. A young, cute, cocky Spanish guy, Israel immediately took charge. He wanted to meet up with his friends, so he engineered this through multiple cell phone conversations as we waited. He then led us through the streets to a square where we waited some more, amidst the loud drinking youth of Spain, until three of his friends and their girlfriends arrived. I say “girlfriends,” but “accessories” would be more appropriate. For the remainder of the evening the girls said little, preened often, and as a rule simply followed wordlessly on the arms of their boys. The boys, on the other hand, had long and loud conversations on their cell phones, which informed their conversations with each other about what we would do next. What we would do next usually involved walking across town to get a snack, to see a particular falla, or to meet up with another group of boys.

This went on for FOUR HOURS.

After only two hours, barely able to keep our eyes open and bored to tears by the complete exclusion from the group (since, as girls, we were not expected to do much besides follow), Talley and I suggested that we would like to be dropped at home. This was ignored. As the evening progressed we suggested it with increasing frequency and decreasing tact. This, to our surprise, was essentially laughed at and disregarded. Perhaps we were being too subtle. “We are really tired,” Talley would say, “Can we go home?” Israel would roll his eyes and laugh, and start walking to the next falla. The girls would smile and shrug as if to say, “Well what can we do? Tee-hee!” And everyone would follow.

Bitter, grumpy, and unrested, Talley and I resolved to escape the next day. It required half an hour of negotiation to make clear that we were not meaning to be impolite, we just wanted to see the city. During the conversation it was revealed that part of Sylvie’s bad feeling towards us came because water and electricity were expensive in Valencia. We happily agreed to pay her for our stay. This did not seem to comfort her. And yet, though she did not seem to like us, she was also offended that we wanted to walk around on our own. But we were resolute.

Talley and I had a great day. We quickly adopted as our travel mantra, What shall we eat next? The list of winners included paella, gelato, octopus in tomato sauce, fried calamari, bacon and date sandwiches, roasted chestnuts, gelato, and multiple helpings of chorros and bunuelos, two delicious variations on the fried dough theme.

About nine hours of eating later we took a short pause to see the fireworks grand finale. The company that designed the fireworks for the Athens Olympic Games happens to be based in Valencia, and was therefore also in charge of this year’s fallas display. In the weeks before coming to Spain, I was told many times of the fabulous fireworks. I have to admit I didn’t pay much attention – after all, I’ve seen plenty of huge fireworks displays, including Fourth of July in NYC when you can catch five shows at once from the right rooftop.

But these were, by far, the most fantastic fireworks I have ever seen. To start, the colors ranged the whole spectrum, not just the standard common-chemical bold-color palette. And the fireworks did things I did not know were possible with current pyrotechnology: they fell and rose again while bursting, they broke into pieces that each erupted in sparks, they rocked gently down the sky like tiny burning parachutes.

It is no wonder that thousands and thousands of people came out to see the show, which didn’t even begin until one in the morning. Can you imagine an American city planning any event for one in the morning? But all night the streets were packed with all ages and types of people, and the bars and restaurants were open. Random intersections had become outdoor clubs, with band playing and hundreds of dancers. We returned to Sylvie’s in the morning to catch a few hours of sleep before heading out again into the final day.

The last Saturday of Las Fallas is filled with anticipation. Huge crowds mill through the streets, catching glimpses of all the art that is about to disappear. Around eleven, just after Spanish dinnertime, people claim their spots. There’s a bit of drinking – in Spanish style, many groups carry mixed-drinks ingredients with them in brown shopping bags – but mostly the crowd is just giddy from five days of all-night celebration. Intersections become clogged with spectators as the fallas artists begin to lace their work with strings of firecrackers and explosives. Plastic bottles of gasoline are tossed casually into the nooks and crannies of the giant papier mache figures. Firemen gather.

At last, when the artists feel the time has come, the switch is thrown. Firecrackers strung over the street burst to life, popping and spinning on their wires. Sparks fly, rhythmically making their way to the central sculpture. Suddenly the noise is deafening. Fireworks inside the sculpture break away, whizzing between buildings and showering the crowd. The papier mache catches quickly. Great clouds of toxic black smoke rush upwards, punctuated by rattling booms as the flames reach hidden caches of explosives. Within minutes the exoskeleton of the sculpture is burning and peeling away, revealing the wooden scaffolding below. The heat is so powerful it pushes back the crowd. Firemen ignore the main pyre and focus their hoses on the nearby awnings and facades.

By the time the last explosives have discharged, the crowd is quieter, staring in flushed awe at the towering forms that collapse piece by piece into smoky heaps. In the distance the smoke and fireworks of other fallas squeeze between the rooftops.

Eight hundred fallas. Eight hundred bonfires, surrounded by eight hundred crowds, releasing eight hundred displays of noise and flame in the late late hours of one single night. Eight hundred neighborhood groups that came together to create sculpture and music and parades for seven days, with no incentive from any God or politician.


As the last fallas burned, Talley, Jean Francois and I called Sylvie, who had stopped by her apartment before going out dancing. We told her we were on our way back. We were exhausted. We had barely slept in three days, and had just witnessed six hours of unrelenting visual and aural explosion. We needed shelter.

Because of the crowds the trip back to the apartment took longer than expected. By the time we arrived we were leaning heavily on each other, dreaming out loud of our cold mats on the living room floor.

But Sylvie had left.

Sylvie had left, along with her housemate Israel, to go dancing at the club where their final housemate worked. There was no one home. No one was likely to be home for hours.

We staggered back towards the center. As the sky lightened the crowds were thinning. The festival, which had gone on uninterrupted for seven days, had climaxed and collapsed. By five the street cleaners were sweeping up around the few clusters of lingering hangers-on, huddled around corners and park benches.

After an hour of criss-crossing the cold streets we found a dingy café and slumped around a table. For three hours we ordered, one by one, a procession of very small dishes. Around eight a.m. we had beers.

At nine, Sylvie answered her mobile. They were about to leave the club. We somehow made it back to her place and packed up our things. We left money on the table for the showers we had been asked not to take and the electricity we did not use while locked out. We went directly to the bus station. We took a bus to Cartagena.

Now Talley and I are in her third-floor apartment here in this Mediterranean town on the southeast coast of Spain. It feels like heaven.

12 march 2005

9:24 am

Last nite I was going to take a “nite off,” since my week was: Monday – Doos until closing, Tuesday – Café Alto jazz until 3, Wednesday – lacrosse dinner and Doos until 3:30, Thursday – international finger food dinner at Filip’s, followed by the borrel, followed by Dansen bij Jansen until 5. And Saturday is the big party at Plantage when I’m working the bar.

So when Natalia asked if I would host her birthday dinner on Friday, I said sure. That way after dinner I could settle down with a book.

So at five Natalia came and rearranged my room and looked gloomily at my unvacuumed carpet. We chatted until the guests came shortly after six: three Turkish girls in gender and media studies, and Theresa the fifty-year-old African American woman from Clinton Hill who devoted ten years to cleaning up her neighborhood park. We ate Russian salt soup, southern fried chicken, red wine. After the meal Natalia sang opera while we cut the chocolate mousse cake that I dropped upside-down into the street that afternoon.

At nine it was just me and lots of dishes, and at nine thirty it was just me and the world wide web. All was proceeding as planned. Then Jackie, who lives next door but whom I’ve never met, knocked on my door. She was hosting a party and the smokers in the garden had seen my light on, so she invited me over. She introduced me to half the guests, including Taylor the birthday girl.

We all drank and chatted until midnite, when Taylor, Sebastian – the roommate of my Swedish friend Filip – and I grabbed our bikes and went to Taylor’s for a snack. Since it was her birthday she treated herself to a coveted bag of microwave popcorn. Wine.

Back on our bikes and to Bitterzoet. Shots of Jaeger. Two games of pool, English rules, with a crowd of creepy men on the prowl. Dancing until four when, in Dutch style, the music stopped abruptly and all the lights popped on.

Three messages on my cell from Marie Carmen. They were headed to the Doos. Taylor, Sebastian and I went. Maria and Gianluca working the bar. Half the regulars still there at 4:30. Dancing.

Five thirty. Sudden craving for diner breakfast. No one can think of a place that might be open. Taylor, Sebastian and I back on our bikes, determined to eat that satisfying meal that follows a nite of drinking and dancing. We bike to Waterlooplein, dark and shuttered. We bike to Nieuwmarkt, where the bars are just closing. We bike through the red light district, ornamented with single men stealing home under the first lightness in the sky. We bike to the Noordermarkt, where the organic sellers are just beginning to set up their stalls on the skirts of the North Church.

We are stopped on a corner, looking down the street for signs of opening. The new light suddenly disappears. The sky is dark ominous gray. There is lightning. There is hail, for two minutes. Then the hail transforms into huge flakes of soft snow. In two minutes, the sky is clear again. The only proof of this freak storm, coming too early to be witnessed or spoken about, is our wet hair and the frosty car windshields.

We are cold, but determined. We bike through the backstreets of the Jordaan, checking café windows for opening hours: ten, eleven, ten thirty. It is seven. We are ravenous, and we are cold, and we are tired, and it is beautiful. We cross bridges to see the sky, again clear, reflected in the canals. The streets are empty and the stores are shut but the sky is blue and we have this all to ourselves. It feels magic. It is a secret.

The streetlights all simultaneously pop off.

We cross more bridges. We circle blocks. Dark windows, empty windows. And then: a window with people behind it. A corner café by the Noordermarkt. We are ecstatic. The barman is serving coffee to the market workers. We are cold and wet and surprisingly awake. We drink koffie verkeerds and pick greedily at croissants.

(My alarm clock just went off.)

We return to the rapidly emerging market. There is a stand here I have eyed for weeks where they make pancakes. It is still just a table.

We wander through the cheeses, eye the seeds and eggs. We are told several times that things are not open yet. They need time to set up.

I buy bread, in Dutch, after asking the cost, in Dutch. I feel triumphant.

We hover by the pancake table. The two women slowly, deliberately work through the motions of their Saturday morning: opening Tupperware containers of shredded cheese, zesting lemons, arranging forks.

At last they agree to serve us. We all order pancakes with lemon and sugar: met citroen en suiker. They are delicious.

We are collectively, suddenly, and deeply tired. I am thankful to live only two blocks away. Our goodbyes are brief, since we all plan on attending the same party tonite, the party at Plantage.

It is 9:59 a.m. I live in Amsterdam. I am going to sleep.

reduction

I think I just figured out what I want in a relationship. I'm astounded! I have never known before. But this has been a year of revelations. So here it is. I can't believe it's so simple. I also can't believe it's so rare.

When I send you a text message at midnight saying, here I am at Bitterzoet, a fantastic club playing, once a month only, live Brazilian music, why don’t you join me? The correct answer is: I’m on my way.

The alternative correct answer is to save yourself ten euro cents and thirty seconds, and just to go get on your bike.

The incorrect answers include: I’m already home. It’s really cold out. That club has a cover. I have reading to do. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. There are many more incorrect answers than correct answers. That’s just how it is.

All of the incorrect answers are your right and privilege to give. I will not give you shit about them. I will not, as I might once have done, quietly wonder why I’m not worth it. And I will not, as I might once have done, hesitate the next time I feel likely to put myself out there. Because I already know that if I don’t ask, the response will be If you wanted me to join you, why didn’t you just ask? And I would be left thinking, Why can’t I win?

So fuck it. If my choices are between getting rejected and never opening my mouth in the first place, I’d rather get rejected. At least then I know that it’s you making the bad decision. At least then I realize that I am the person who understands that the opportunity to dance to live Brazilian music on a snowy Amsterdam night is the most fantastically unlikely and fabulous gift, that it is the product of cultural forces and climatic patterns and my own inexplicable physical existence, that such a thing is Never. Ever. to be taken for granted.

And I realize that the complacency of not wanting to get off the couch, the reluctance to experience ten minutes of cold on a beautiful night, the reservations about spending five euros for music when you’d spend it in a second on a beer, these are sins. And there it is. And I’m sorry if that sounds dramatic, but what the fuck else are we here for? What the fuck else is worth it besides snow and dancing and tasting beer and smoke on someone’s lips?

But instead of blaming either of us, I will just note that we are not a good match. This will confuse you but I will remind myself that repeating the same thing and expecting a different outcome is crazy. I will give you my silent and unnecessary blessing to sit on your couch, and then I will continue dancing. In ten minutes I will be receiving a lesson from a Brazilian named Fabio, who will conclude that I catch on quickly except my samba is a little hopeless. Fabio will say, In some places when they dance they think about other things, but in Brazil when we dance we think only of dancing. Maybe that is why Brazilians are so happy. Love is nice, but dancing is better.

(And eventually I will meet someone who not only answers but also sends text messages at midnight, and we will go to obscure concerts and we will take trains to nowhere and we will make big art. And until then I’ll just keep happily doing all this shit by myself, and I’ll keep being thankful to the Fabios I run into along the way who just want to dance for a few hours.)

I am not so old yet that sex should require negotiation and I am not so old yet that I have had enough walks through the snow and I am not so old yet that I need a good night's sleep, and may I never be.